


No Puppet Strings Can Hold Me Down

by Haberdasher



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Archivist Jonathan Sims, Bittersweet Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Childhood Memories, Death, Eye Contact, Eyes, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memories, POV Jon, POV Jonathan Sims, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Pining, Pining Jonathan Sims, Possession, Self-Harm, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period, Shooting, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, The Mechanisms Were The Archivist's College Band, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22335241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: An AU that diverges from canon between episodes 159 and 160, in which Peter Lukas’ statement that “he got you” takes on a different meaning.
Relationships: Jonah Magnus & Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 244
Kudos: 271





	1. Chapter 1

Jon had wanted to leave the Lonely while holding Martin’s hand, because...

Well, if he was being perfectly honest with himself (which had never been Jon’s strong suit), there was more than one reason behind it, but the main reason--the _practical_ reason, the _logical_ reason--was that if they were touching, if they were holding tight to one another, perhaps when they re-entered the rest of the world, the Lonely would spit them out together, ensure that they remained standing side by side.

But Jon hadn’t pushed for it, hadn’t even dared to mention the possibility out loud. A lot of things had happened (both between the two of them and in general) very quickly, and just getting Martin to _look_ at him in the Lonely hadn’t been an easy task, and he didn’t want to do anything too quickly, didn’t want to make any gesture too forward, didn’t want to risk losing the connection that he had yet to give a name.

Martin himself either hadn’t thought of it or had decided against trying for it as well (which wasn’t much of a surprise, really), so while the two of them had left the Lonely together, Jon found that when he returned to a more grounded reality, Martin was nowhere to be seen.

A quick look around revealed that he was in his office at the Institute, looking the same as it had last time he’d seen it. Being spat out there made a certain kind of sense, Jon supposed, between the rib he kept in the desk drawer and the tape recorders strewn across the floor and it being his personal office, the place where he spent most of his days, the place that was his and his alone within the Institute...

By that same logic, then, Martin would probably be-

Before Jon had even consciously finished the thought, he got to his feet and started making his way out of his office and towards that of Peter Lukas.

Or that which _had_ been Peter Lukas’, more precisely. It’s not as if he would be getting to reclaim it, after all.

Jon made his way to Lukas’ old office as quickly as he could, but he stumbled a few times along the way and stopped once or twice because he thought he heard something that boded poorly for him, though the handful of blood splatters he spotted served only to hasten his pace further.

Someone was in the office, and for a split second Jon’s heart leaped, only to come crashing down when he realized that the one sitting calmly behind the desk wasn’t Martin, but Elias.

(Or Jonah, John supposed, given what he knew now, but he’d known his boss as Elias for years and Jonah Magnus for hours at most, so Elias he would remain in Jon’s mind, at least when he was face to face with the bastard.)

The disappointment that Jon felt upon seeing Elias looked to be matched in intensity by the excitement Elias appeared to have regarding the same encounter.

“Jon!”

Something about the upbeat sound of Elias’ voice, about the enthusiasm in his glistening blue eyes, about the smile spreading rapidly across his face, tipped Jon off that whatever he had stumbled into here, it wasn’t anything he wanted to be a part of in the slightest.

Jon began to turn around. “I’ll just be going-”

“Oh, don’t go now, Jon. This will only take a minute.”

Jon lingered in the doorway for a long moment, not quite facing Elias but not entirely facing away from him either, one hand brushing against the door frame as he considered his next move. A large part of him wanted nothing more than to turn around, to slam the door in Elias’ face and go back to seeking out Martin, but...

_This will only take a minute._

What did Elias- what did _Jonah Magnus_ mean by “this”?

What was he up to now, after so much had changed so rapidly, and why did he want Jon to be part of it?

_Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back..._

Against his better judgment, Jon turned back towards Elias. “What do you want from me?”

That grin on Elias’ face was _definitely_ a bad sign.

“You’re asking the wrong question there. What you should be asking is, what do I want _with_ you?”

Jon wasn’t quite sure why substituting out that one word would make such a difference in the answer to his question, and he was about to say as much when... _something_ happened.

It wasn’t a sensation, exactly, at least not a physical one, any feeling that Jon perceived from it clearly lodged in his mind rather than in his body. It wasn’t a lack of sensation, either, because he could still see Elias sitting there looking as smug as always, could still feel the grain of the wooden doorway brushing against his hand, could still hear--were those screams, or just heated words, somewhere off in the distance?

But still, Jon felt something come over him, felt something in his brain shift and settle into an altered position, and when he went to yell at Elias he found that he... couldn’t. Couldn’t open his mouth and speak of his own accord. Couldn’t back away from the office, which was his second attempted reaction. Couldn’t so much as turn his head, or close his eyes... no matter how he tried to move, nothing happened, all his efforts proving to be in vain.

Jon looked at Elias, hoping that the fierceness of his gaze could express what he otherwise couldn’t, and for a moment, the two made eye contact. Jon was expecting Elias’ eyes to still be smug and sparkling, but instead, what he saw in them was... uncertainty. Fear, even.

In all the years that Jon had worked under Elias, he couldn’t remember ever seeing fear in his boss’ eyes.

As Jon kept looking at Elias--because he couldn’t look elsewhere, couldn’t avert his gaze if he tried--he noticed that those scared eyes of Elias’ were hazel now, far from the light blue they’d been for all those years, and Jon could feel the corners of his mouth turning upwards now, though smiling was about the last thing he felt like doing right now...

Jon wasn’t sure exactly how the knowledge came to him, whether he put the puzzle pieces together himself or whether he simply Knew what had happened, but one way or another, that was when he figured out what was going on, figured out exactly what sort of trouble he had landed himself in this time.

Elias--the _real_ Elias, now, it had to be, the one who had been a bit of a pothead back in uni, who had probably applied to the Institute expecting some cushy ivory tower job, not knowing what he was actually getting himself into until it was far too late--broke away from Jon’s (from _Jonah’s_ ) gaze, hands shaking as he pushed his chair away from his desk.

Jon felt himself walk over, strides calm and confident, approaching that same desk and opening a drawer without looking at it; his hand gripped something cold and hard from the drawer, and while Jon’s gaze was still fixed on Elias rather than what he had just retrieved, his mind came up with a handful of possibilities for what he now had in his hand, none of them pleasant.

Elias tried to use one hand to steady himself as he stood up, but his whole body was shaking now, and once he was standing he looked uncertain as to how he should proceed from there, though he was looking at the open doorway as much as at Jon himself. Was he... was he unsure how to _walk_ now? Had he forgotten even that, after decades of being controlled by Jonah Magnus, being as paralyzed as Jon was now during all that time?

As Elias stood still, breaths heavy and eyes watering, Jon’s arm rose up, and he could see the glint of metal out of the corner of his eye as he continued to stare at Elias’ face-

Jon saw the gun clearly only a moment before the gunshot rang out.

He’d heard Elias- heard _Jonah Magnus_ shoot Gertrude in cold blood not long ago, on a conveniently-appearing tape. (Had it been minutes ago? Hours? It couldn’t be more than hours, surely--it _was_ the same evening still, wasn’t it?)

Jon hadn’t thought that he’d be hearing another gunshot so soon, and he certainly hadn’t thought it would be his finger pulling the trigger.

The shot landed a bit above Elias’ left eye, and it wasn’t a clean one, but it did its job just the same. Jon watched, unable to do anything _but_ watch, as Elias collapsed, blood spilling in the office as his body crumpled to the floor, the man killed by Jon’s own hand.

Truth be told, Jon had imagined himself murdering Elias before, taking pleasure in the vision even as he knew he’d never actually act it out... but not like this. _Never_ like this.


	2. Chapter 2

Jon wanted to move, to scream, to do _something_ to break the dull silence that fell over Lukas’ office after Elias took his last breath, but instead, he found his body acting in ways that were much too calm and calculated for his own liking.

He set the gun down gently on the desk, so gently that Jon wondered if Jonah Magnus, aka the entity formerly known as Elias Bouchard, was actually focused on making sure his old desk remained in pristine condition rather than on, well, on literally anything else about the situation at hand.

He started walking briskly away from the scene of the crime, out of the office and through the Institute’s hallways, destination as yet unknown.

He didn’t even have the decency to _run_.

As Jon’s body kept walking of its own accord (or, rather, of _Elias’_ accord), Jon started trying to test his limits, figure out exactly what he could and couldn’t do in his current predicament.

Jon focused all his attention on his pinky finger, the one he’d tried to cut off before realizing that he’d need to go to more drastic measures to find himself a proper anchor to this reality, an act that somehow felt both as if it had happened only yesterday and as if it had taken place an eternity ago. Jon concentrated on that one finger and put all the willpower he could muster into getting it to move, even slightly.

His finger didn’t so much as twitch.

After a few moments, Jon let his focus go, recognizing that all he seemed to be accomplishing by concentrating on a single finger was losing track of everything else going on around him. A single word echoed loudly and bitterly through his mind as he began to ponder his next move, which would hopefully be less of a resounding failure.

_Fuck._

(Scientists did a study, once, showing that people could tolerate pain, in the form of freezing cold water, better if they were allowed use of profanities while enduring it. Jon didn’t know how he knew this, wasn’t sure if he’d read it somewhere and forgotten the source or simply Knew it out of nowhere, but he appreciated the knowledge just the same...

...but the pain involved here was of a very different sort than mere frigid water, and though he let himself scream the obscenity as loudly as he could within his own mind, it didn’t help nearly as much as he had hoped.)

Jon felt his pace slow, and as his thoughts flowed from the single word he had briefly but intensely fixated on, he heard another voice. Not his own, not leaving his mouth, but one echoing through his head just the same.

This voice, too, fixated on a single word.

_**Language.** _

That was Elias’ voice, clearly, it had to be... though something about it was ever so slightly different from how Jon remembered it. The pitch was off, perhaps, was that it?

Jon focused with a renewed intensity, let a single thought dominate his mind as he had before, put his energy into not physical movement but mental volume.

_You can hear me?_

The response came almost immediately.

**_No, I’m just talking to myself here--_ yes _, Jon, I can hear you._**

_So... so, you can hear my thoughts, then._

Jon phrased it as a statement, not a question, in an attempt to avoid further condescension from Elias, but his mind was racing as he considered the implications. If Elias could hear his every thought... if he couldn’t so much as _think_ about his current predicament without Elias knowing, if any inklings he had of a plan were constantly being broadcast to the one he most needed to hide them from-

**_When you practically scream them at me, yes. Not otherwise. It’s for the best, really; I’ve got enough on my mind without having to hear everything that must be going through_ your _mind right now, and I’m sure you appreciate the slight semblance of privacy._**

Jon would have let out a sigh of relief, if he could.

Elias was right, at least, that a lot was going through Jon’s mind at the moment. There must have been dozens, maybe hundreds of questions that he considered raising, but Jon knew well enough from past experience that if he asked anything of consequence, anything that might actually give him some useful information, Elias was likely to blow him off, giving some sort of unhelpful non-answer while insinuating that _somehow_ it was for Jon’s own good in the greater scheme of things that he not get any proper answers. Better to ask something small, something that didn’t matter much but might be an opening to a more meaningful conversation.

 _Your voice sounds different than it usually does... is this your_ real _voice I’m hearing, then? The way you sounded when you founded the Institute, back when you were still going by Jonah Magnus?_

Jon’s face remained set in a neutral expression, but Jon could hear the smug smile in Elias’ response just the same.

_**Precisely.** _

Not the most helpful of responses, but perhaps he could still segue it into something closer to what he actually wanted to know right now.

_Did Elias--the original Elias--talk to you like this often? When you were in his body?_

There was a pause this time, a brief moment in which nothing was said. Elias--Jonah--had to think through his response here, it seemed.

**_Not terribly often, no. I think he more or less gave up after the first couple of months. Can’t say that I minded, really. The sort of running commentary he gave me was awfully boorish and immature... unlike you. I must say, Jon, I am_ very _excited to see how you react to all of this._**

Jon didn’t hesitate, didn’t waste any time mincing his words.

_Oh, fuck off._

Jon wasn’t sure if the discontented grunt he heard was spoken aloud or only mentally, but that was the only response he received.

If that was the end of their little conversation... well, it hadn’t exactly been a resounding success, but at least he’d learned _something_ about what he was in for now, for better or for worse.


	3. Chapter 3

A minute or two passed in silence as Jon walked through the hallways of the Institute, not quite sure where his own legs were taking him, what destination Jonah Magnus had in mind for him.

Then Jon saw Martin, and his heart leaped.

(Metaphorically, at least. Literally, his pulse barely changed, though Jon was certain that if he had control of his own body, his heart would be racing right now.)

Jon felt himself speed up, saw Martin hasten his pace in turn, and only a few moments after Martin had appeared as a speck in the distance, the two were face to face.

“Jon?”

“Martin!”

It was Jon’s voice, it was coming from Jon’s mouth, it was probably what Jon would have said in much the same tone he would have said it.

But Jon was not the one who had made himself say Martin’s name.

If Martin noticed anything was up, though, Jon couldn’t tell--and Jon thought he would have been able to tell now, now that Martin was opening up again, now that the walls that he had spent several long months building up around him were finally starting to come crashing down.

“Are you alright? I- I think I heard a gunshot, I was worried-”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Jon said, though nothing could be further from the truth.

_You call this “fine”?_

No response from Elias, from Jonah, from _whatever_ he felt like calling the bastard that had abducted his body, but then, he hadn’t really expected one.

“You?”

Martin scratched the back of his head nervously. “I’ll live.”

“You’re not-”

“D’you think I wouldn’t have mentioned if I’d been the one who got shot?” Martin continued, his voice tinged with shaky laughter. “I’m not hurt. I’m okay. I- I think I’ll be _okay_.”

Jon understood what Martin meant, there, knew that Martin’s definition of “okay” was more expansive than merely not having been shot. There was a deeper kind of “okay” there, and Jon was certainly glad to hear that Martin thought he’d qualify for it once again.

Jon only wished he could say the same for himself.

(Or say the opposite, tell Martin what was actually going on, which was very far from okay in Jon’s book.)

“Where were you?”

The question didn’t have any compulsion to it, not as far as Jon could tell--he certainly wouldn’t have put it there himself, he wasn’t even sure he _could_ anymore--but Martin answered it without hesitation just the same.

“Looking for you.”

If Jon had been thinking straight, had been thinking about it at all, he probably would have suspected that Martin would say as much, but as it was, he hadn’t been expecting it, hadn’t expected Martin to clearly state that he had been seeking out Jon as much as Jon had been seeking out Martin, at least before... well, _before_.

It would have taken his breath away, if his breath was his own still.

“Well.” There was a brief silence there, a surprisingly comfortable one given the situation, before Jon spoke again, his lips contorting themselves into a wry smile as the words came out. “Look no further.”

“I won’t.” Martin said with a shaky laugh. “I... we should probably go, I don’t think it’s safe here, especially with- with some maniac shooting up the place...”

 _Is that what I should call you? Some maniac? Fits better than Elias_ or _Jonah, in my opinion-_

Jon’s thoughts were interrupted not by Elias-Jonah-some-maniac making some snarky mental response, nor even his own voice responding to Martin, but Martin himself speaking up again.

“Your- your eyes. I just noticed, your eyes look different. Are they- blue?”

Jon laughed, on the inside, where it mattered. Because of course Martin would notice. Martin, who had always been more observant than him, Beholding powers notwithstanding. Martin, who always paid attention to _him_ specifically. Martin, who had always cared so much about him, even when he’d given him so few reasons for Martin to give a damn about his jerk of a boss...

Jonah, for his part, did a fairly convincing impression of someone who had no idea why their eyes might look different than normal. His hands pressed against the area around his eyes, not enough to hurt but enough to seem like a legitimate examination, though Jon honestly wasn’t sure if he’d be able to tell if his eyes had changed shape or size or whatnot by sense of touch alone.

“ _Are_ they blue? Do you have a mirror, or-”

Martin shook his head, but he kept his gaze locked on Jon’s eyes--on _Jonah_ ’s eyes. “They _are_ blue. I’m sure of it. How did that happen?”

“I don’t know-”

“Aren’t you the one who should know these things?”

Jonah-Jon let out a grunt of mild frustration, and Martin let out a soft snort in response.

“Maybe- maybe the Lonely changed me somehow. I don’t- I don’t _know_.”

_Liar._

“...well, you weren’t the only one in there, you know. Are _my_ eyes any different, then?”

Martin believed Jonah, then, believed that his eye color changing might really be due to his encounter with the Lonely alone, that they were Jon’s eyes transformed and not Jonah’s eyes now on his body, and that probably should have stung more than it did, but...

Jon wondered if Jonah knew what he was doing, when he had his body gaze into Martin’s eyes. Maybe he did, maybe it was part of one of his mind games or a small piece of some greater plan. In that moment, Jon didn’t much care. He could look at Martin, look deep into Martin’s eyes for what had to be longer than would be strictly necessary, their eyes locked on one another as Jon desperately tried to figure out what Martin was thinking, what Martin was feeling, how much Martin knew...

And then the moment ended, Jon was forced to look away, and his head shook roughly, several long strands of hair falling onto his face in the process.

“No, Martin. Your eyes are the same as always.”

“Alright. Good to know.” Martin took a deep breath, then let it out slowly before saying, “We really ought to get going, before the wrong people bump into us-”

“Right, right. Of course.”

As Jon and Martin turned towards the main entrance of the Magnus Institute, the two walking side by side, Jon’s hand briefly brushed against Martin’s, and he wondered, distantly, how differently things might have gone if he had been brave enough to hold Martin’s hand when he had still had the chance.


	4. Chapter 4

The time between leaving the Magnus Institute behind and getting on the open road felt like a blur.

They’d stopped at Martin’s flat briefly, and the flat was cozy and comfortable and might have been nice to linger in under different circumstances, but as it was all that happened there was a mad dash to pack things away and Jon feeling his own heartbeat race every time he heard a police siren in the background. (Apparently, though he’d seemed to have a decent enough time there in Elias’ body, and certainly hadn’t found it especially difficult to _leave_ , Jonah Magnus was no more eager to land himself in jail now than Jon himself was.)

Then the two of them--the three of them?--got in Martin’s beat-up blue sedan, and Martin began to drive.

If he were himself, Jon might have volunteered to drive. It had been a long day for him, but Martin certainly could say the same, and it might have been a nice gesture, taking that small necessity away from Martin, letting him sit back and relax as Jon got them where they needed to be. (Which was, they had decided, an old safehouse of Daisy’s in Scotland, far from here, far from the police, far from just about anyone who might want to follow their scent.)

As it was, Jonah didn’t volunteer to drive, and John was grateful for it, because he didn’t trust Jonah Magnus not to drive the car into a fence post or something if he decided that was what best fit his master plan, whatever that was. (Also, did he even know how to drive? John couldn’t remember Elias ever driving, and Jonah Magnus _was_ from the 1800s, after all...)

They listened to the radio for a long while, even once they got far enough away from London that the familiar stations started to dissolve into nothingness and static, Martin occasionally humming along to whatever song happened to be playing or tapping the steering wheel in beat with the rhythm as Jon remained quiet and still both inside and out. The city slowly turned into the suburbs which slowly turned into the countryside, vast and practically empty, rolling green hills and quaint cottages dominating the landscape as far as the eye could see.

It felt like a breath being held, like the pause between heartbeats, like a space between what had been and what might be.

Eventually, they were far enough from the city that no pattern could be heard in the static coming from the radio, and one of them turned it off--Jon honestly wasn’t sure if it was Martin’s hand or his own that pushed the dial in, only knowing that one second there had been cacophonous static ringing through the car and the next second there was only a strange, distant silence.

Martin was the one who finally broke the silence.

“This reminds me of some of the field trips I went on back in school... have you ever been to Stonehenge, by any chance?”

Jon shook his head and muttered “No.”

(Jon wasn’t sure if Jonah Magnus Knew that Jon hadn’t been to Stonehenge, or whether it was simply a lucky guess, but it was true just the same. Jon hadn’t gone there during his school days, and he wasn’t really one for taking vacations-- _real_ vacations, that is, not being kidnapped or hiding out from a murder charge or trying to stop the end of the world--and on the rare occasion he’d left town of his own accord, he’d always found other destinations more appealing than Stonehenge, much as he appreciated the history behind its construction.)

Martin let out a soft laugh as he replied, “Would not recommend it.”

Jon didn’t know what exactly about that statement was worthy of laughter-

-until, suddenly, he _did_.

Jon saw it all, clear as day. The packed school bus, where songs turned to screams intermittently and pencils and erasers got flung about on multiple occasions as a young Martin inched close to the window and tried desperately to focus on the cheap fantasy novel he’d brought along in his backpack. The children groaning and shuffling their feet as adults tried to explain why a bunch of rocks were exciting enough to be worth riding a bus for hours, only actually growing excited when one of their number sneaked under the rope separating the artifact from its visitors and tried to touch one of the rocks in question, getting a stern talking-to from the supervising teacher for his troubles. The bus being even louder and more chaotic on the way back, somehow, and young Martin giving up on the fantasy novel and turning to a polka-dot notebook, doing his best to channel his frustration with his current situation into pretty words to set down on paper...

He hadn’t meant to Know it, of course, but that had never stopped him before, either. But it was good to know that- that he could still Know things, that that at least hadn’t been taken from him, not that knowledge alone could do him much good, as a mind without a body-

Jon was jolted out of his thoughts and back into the present situation by the sound of Martin’s voice.

“Just because we’re out of range of the radio doesn’t mean it has to be silent in here, you know. We just need to provide our own music, that’s all. And you know, one of those old school songs just got stuck in my head again...”

Jon waited, curious to know which one of the dozen or so-- _fourteen_ , okay, thank you Eye powers--songs that had been sung on the school bus that day was once again coming to mind for Martin. None of them seemed particularly apt in Jon’s mind, but perhaps Martin saw things differently, was making connections that Jon hadn’t made, unobservant and cerebral as he could be-

“ _I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves_...”

Internally, Jon cracked up.

Externally, Jonah in Jon’s body groaned slightly and grabbed his temple with one hand.

“ _Everybody’s nerves, everybody’s nerves_...”

The best part about it was that Martin was singing the song with every bit of certainty and passion that he’d used when occasionally singing along to snippets on the radio, if not more so. Martin’s singing voice was--well, he probably couldn’t make a career out of it or anything, but it was nice in its own way, surprisingly soothing even, given the current source material...

Jon’s body groaned exaggeratedly and curled into himself until his head was nearly touching his lap.

“Alright, alright, I’ll stop. But at least we’ve _both_ got it stuck in our heads now, right?” Jon didn’t exactly have the best perspective with which to view Martin’s face at the moment, so he heard more than saw the wry smile as Martin continued, “Better than facing it alone, at least.”

Jon felt himself mumble, while still awkwardly curled up, “’s still not _nice_.”

“I’ll promise you a lot of things, Jon, but I’m not sure I can promise _nice_.”

As the car lapsed into silence once more, aside from a bit of humming on Martin’s part, Jon got an idea.

_Hey Jonah?_ _Or Elias, or some maniac, or whatever the hell it is you want me to-_

_**What?** _

The annoyance and frustration in Jonah’s voice were palpable.

Jon took a second to savor the moment before he began.

_I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves..._

_**Don’t.** _

_Or what? What are you going to do to me? Turn me into a murderous monster? Stop me from controlling my own body?_

**_I didn’t make you kill Lukas, if that’s what you’re referring to there, and your..._ monstrosity _, as you put it, is the result of a series of choices you’ve made over the years, decisions that I did not force upon you-_**

_The question still stands. So much has been taken from me already. What else could you possibly do?_

Jonah didn’t respond for a moment, and Jon took the opportunity to return to the song that Martin had so helpfully brought to his attention.

_Everybody’s nerves, everybody’s-_

_**...you’ll see.** _

_What?_

Jon asked not because he didn’t hear Jonah--if “hear” was even the right word for their current means of communication--or because he didn’t understand what Jonah Magnus was getting at, but because he wasn’t going to let Jonah get away with giving a vague statement like that and not elaborating further.

**_I said, you’ll_ see _what else I have in store for you soon enough, Jon. In the mean time, I suggest you not test me, lest you end up regretting it._**

In the silence that followed, Jon really, _really_ wished he knew whether Jonah Magnus was bluffing.


	5. Chapter 5

Jon wasn’t sure how much time passed there as the car kept speeding down the road, nobody saying a word the whole time, though Martin hummed along to a few bars of that song every now and then. Eventually Jonah made him uncurl, made him look up and out the window, but the unremarkable and indistinguishable bits of field that dominated the landscape didn’t actually help Jon get a sense of where exactly they were or how much longer it would be any more than staring at the car seat fabric.

At some point, though, a point that had to be several hours after their departure from London, Martin turned off of the main road.

“Running low on petrol.” Martin explained as the car turned into a little town that could be anywhere, as far as Jon could tell. Not that it really mattered where they were right this minute, he supposed--this trip was very much about the destination, not about the journey to it. Safety, or some vague semblance thereof, awaited them in the far reaches of the Scottish highlands, and unless Jonah Magnus had something to say about it, that was all that mattered.

“Think I’ll grab a few things in the station while we’re at it. D’you want to join me?”

And Jon found himself replying, “Sounds good. I could use to grab a snack.”

Did Martin’s expression tighten a little there, or was that just Jon’s imagination?

The inside of the petrol station was almost exactly how Jon would have imagined it at a guess: a few aisles of unhealthy portable foodstuffs, a bored-looking cashier, grimy floors, and an unpleasant smell that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Martin went down one of the station’s handful of aisles, Jon down another, and soon Martin was out of sight.

_**What do you want to eat?** _

It took Jon a minute to register the question and all that it implied: that Jonah was speaking to him first rather than vice versa, seeking out his input, and on a subject as trivial as food, no less.

_Can’t you just Know?_

It was half a knee-jerk reaction to avoid giving Jonah any information and half an actual question. Jon knew from experience that Jonah wasn’t entirely omniscient, but he’d only been caught off-guard before when he was distracted, and here, in the middle of an unexceptional petrol station in the middle of an unexceptional small town, there was precious little in the way of distractions.

_**I thought you might like to have some input.** _

Jon began pacing up and down the aisle, the constant movement oddly soothing even though he wasn’t the one in control of it.

 _I’m not going to help you with... convincing Martin you’re me, or, or_ whatever _this is._

_**Fine. Just thought I’d ask first.** _

Jon slowed to a halt near the front of the aisle, not far from where that still bored-looking cashier stood at their station, and started to scratch his arm.

He didn’t think anything of it at first, but the scratching just grew stronger over time, until it was painful, until it would probably leave red marks for some time, and when he focused on the area he realized he wasn’t even _itchy_ there-

_Is this that big plan you alluded to earlier? Your trump card for getting me to cooperate? Because if so-_

Jonah Magnus laughed, then, and Jon hated the sound of it as it echoed through his mind.

_**Hardly.** _

Martin caught his eye as he, too, headed towards the front, a handful of snack foods in his arms. “You... you alright there, Jon?”

Jon’s eyes drifted down to his arm, and then the scratching finally stopped as he looked back up at Martin. “It’s nothing, really. Just the worm scars. Every now and then, I swear I can feel them itching...”

“Oh... I’m sorry.” Martin’s eyes looked so sad, there, and weirdly... guilty? Was he still blaming himself for losing track of them when they’d been under attack in the tunnels? That was ridiculous, all Martin staying with them would have meant was that three of them would’ve been covered in worm scars instead of two, and they probably wouldn’t have found Gertrude’s body until even later...

Jon wanted to say something, to reassure Martin, but he _couldn’t_ and Jonah made him just _stand_ there and...

“Did you find something to eat?”

Oh. Right. Food. The whole reason they’d gone inside the petrol station in the first place. Jon had almost forgotten about it--and, given that his arms were still empty, evidently so had Jonah.

“One second.”

Jon would put money on the fact that Jonah’s choice of food for him was simply the first thing that caught his eye within arm’s reach.

“Oh, good. I’ll buy that for you then.”

“Th-thank you.” Did he really sound like that when he stuttered?

“Don’t thank me, thank Peter Lukas.” Martin grinned as Jon turned to him with what must be a look of confusion on his face. (A feeling both Jon and Jonah shared, presumably, then.) “It’s his money I’m buying all this with.”

“Ah.”

As the cashier started scanning items, with no change to their dead-eyed expression, Martin said conversationally, “Didn’t know you liked salt and vinegar crisps.”

Jon did not like salt and vinegar crisps.

Jon had, in fact, gotten in arguments on multiple occasions due to that fact, and he still stood by his usual explanation that in nature, when food tasted like that, it meant that it was poisonous or rotten or both, and who was he to decide that he knew better than his own taste buds what was or wasn’t good for him?

But as Martin’s car drove away from the petrol station and trudged closer and closer to whatever lay in store in Scotland, Jon had to stomach an entire bag of the things, bitter and rancid and awful with every bite, and he didn’t dare lodge a complaint with the only person who could hear him.


	6. Chapter 6

Jon still had no way of keeping time, and that was starting to get to him.

He could try to Know the time, he supposed, and Know when they’d left and Know when he’d stopped being himself (and started being Jonah, that is, as he was pretty sure any more existential way of approaching such a question couldn’t be answered so easily), but given his previous luck on trying to Know things on purpose, he’d probably just end up with some useless knowledge like where apples were from originally. (Central Asia, apparently. Not information he needed, but information that had been thrust upon him just the same.)

The sun had well and truly set by the time they left the petrol station, whenever that was, and while the full moon provided some light, using it to keep track of time was only really possible when he was looking right at it, which wasn’t often.

Also, the taste of salt and vinegar crisps lingered in his mouth far longer than it should have. Gross.

At some point Jonah had him cover his eyes with one arm (not that that meant much for either of them, as they could still See just fine without being able to, well, see) and slump over to the side. That was presumably either a genuine attempt at getting sleep or Jonah feigning the same, and maybe it worked, too, because the next thing Jon knew the moonlight had shifted significantly and Martin was futzing with the car radio.

Jonah-Jon moved his arm and looked up, and Martin glanced over, wide-eyed. “Did I wake you? Sorry, I just- I think we’re close enough to Glasgow we might be able to catch the radio again.”

Jon’s response was a noncommittal grunt.

“I’ll try not to make it too loud, so you can go back to sleep if you want.”

Jon silently shook his head and stared bleary-eyed at Martin’s hands as he fiddled with the radio settings. (Martin’s hands were so much bigger than Jon’s own, but they still had a softness to them, a softness great enough that he could almost feel Martin’s hand against his own as he stared, warm and soothing and... this was probably not what he should be focusing on right now, was it?)

“- _still they lead me back, to the long, winding_ -”

“- _some time to do the things we never_ -”

“- _had a feeling I was gonna be that one in_ -”

“- _futures are on the decline today, as_ -”

“- _and former head of the Magnus Institute_ -”

“Did that just mention the _Institute_?” Martin said, his voice oddly high-pitched as he moved his hand away from the dial. Out of his peripheral vision, Jon could see that his weren’t the only eyes fixed on the radio now; Martin did the same, as if staring at the screen which displayed what station it was tuned into would somehow make the words coming out of the speaker more comprehensible.

Martin pulled over to the side of the road immediately, and Jon and Martin both stared, silent, transfixed, as the calm voice from the radio went on.

“- _dead last night after police were called to the scene of an active shooting incident on the Institute’s grounds. Bouchard was the only casualty, though four others were hospitalized, all currently in stable condition. No suspects have been named at this time, but-”_

Martin turned to Jon with a strange, unreadable look on his face. “Jon, are you on the run for murder again?”

Oh, god, he _was_ , wasn’t he? The second time--in as many years, even!--that Jon was being blamed for a murder that Jonah Magnus had actually committed. Though this time at least he’d seen it play out in person, this time it had even been his own finger on the trigger...

“I certainly hope not.” Jonah responded, a hint of levity in his voice.

“That’s not much of an answer.” Martin sighed. “God, I can’t believe Elias is dead and... and I didn’t even _know_. It’s like it didn’t even happen! And here he told me the Institute staff would all die if he did, and, and _you_ might die, Jon-”

“And you believed him?”

Jon laughed, on the inside, where it counted. So Jonah Magnus himself knew that Jonah (or... or whatever he wanted to call himself) didn’t exactly have a reputation for being trustworthy...

Well, he wasn’t wrong there.

Martin knew it, too, because he responded by making a face and saying, “Fair point.”

The radio kept blaring on in the background, but whatever they’d been saying about the Institute and Elias Bouchard’s death was evidently over, as they’d moved on to discussing the weather to come in the week ahead.

“If... if he’s dead, then, and all that talk about how he controlled the Institute was just that, just empty talk... does that mean we’re free now? Free from the Institute, free from _him_?”

Jon couldn’t help but see the irony in the situation as Jonah Magnus’ whims controlled his voice, his mouth, his entire body, as he replied, “Maybe. God, I hope so.”

Perhaps Martin thought they were free from Jonah Magnus and his smug scheming, but Jon knew better.

Jon knew he had never been less free in his life.


	7. Chapter 7

By the time Martin pulled the car into the driveway of Daisy’s old safehouse, the first rays of sun were just starting to peek out from under the horizon, the night sky turning from a vibrant, starry black into a deep indigo that was growing lighter by the minute.

In hindsight, this was probably not a trip they should have made all in one night. Hell, the archives team (or part of it, at least) had stopped at a bed and breakfast before taking on the Unknowing in Great Yarmouth, and that trip had been about three hours from London, whereas this one... well, Jon didn’t know exactly how long it’d been, but if you doubled the length of the journey to Great Yarmouth, and then doubled it again, you’d probably be in the right ballpark.

But he hadn’t said anything, and Martin hadn’t said anything either, he’d just kept driving along without even a passing mention of stopping for the night along the way...

Well, if they didn’t need a good night’s rest _before_ a night of nonstop driving, both of them certainly did _now_. Hopefully the safehouse that they’d picked, sight unseen, could accommodate as much.

From the outside, the place looked... cozy. Almost like it belonged on a postcard, a lone cabin amidst the wilderness of the Scottish highlands, the “wish you were here” practically writing itself. Except, of course, that the problem wasn’t who _wasn’t_ there with Jon and Martin, but who _was_. “Wish you were gone”, more like.

The air was brisk as Martin unlocked the door to the safehouse, the two of them entering at the break of dawn.

The inside was less picturesque than the outside had been, as various furnishings had clearly been chosen for practicality’s sake rather than to fit any one aesthetic. The curtains were a dark red that was uncomfortably close to the color of dried blood; the couch was a soft navy blue laced with silver veins; the blanket atop the bed was a sickly yellow and visibly stained. Still, it was, if not especially aesthetically pleasing, at least suitable for its purpose. Comfortable, even, perhaps.

It would do. It would have to do.

Unpacking didn’t take terribly long, as neither of them had brought all that much with them that needed unpacking. Funny, in a way, how quickly a life, a home, could be reduced to a handful of suitcases. They would gather more belongings soon enough, sure, but for now a handful of clothes and the greatest of necessities were all that they had to their names.

And a grab bag of statements Martin had hastily grabbed from the Archives on their way out, apparently. Jon... wasn’t sure how he felt about statements being included in the short list of life’s necessities, but it was a nice gesture on Martin’s part just the same.

Most of those belongings didn’t even leave the suitcases that night (that morning?), truth be told. A more thorough unpacking would have to wait. It had been a long, _long_ day, and the siren song of sleep was calling, especially now that there was an actual bed up for grabs.

 _One_ bed. That would be a tight squeeze for two people, even when one of the two was as slender as Jon was now. (For a moment he wondered how long it had been since he’d eaten, and then he remembered the crisps, and he could swear that some tiny remnant of their acrid taste remained on his tongue...)

“I’ll take the couch.” Martin offered immediately.

Jon wanted to protest, to say that if anyone should be taking the couch it should be him, that Martin probably wouldn’t even _fit_ on that couch and he deserved to sleep in a proper bed rather than have his feet dangling off the couch when he slept, that sleeping on the couch would still be worlds better than some places Jon had slept over the years. (And, perhaps, to offer up an arrangement which would involve nobody taking the couch...)

Jonah in Jon’s body nodded and said, “Thank you, Martin. I appreciate it.”

And that was that.

What clothes they had on hand now were all Martin’s, since they hadn’t had time to grab Jon’s things and had compensated by loading much of Martin’s wardrobe into the car instead, so the lilac pajamas that Jon ended up in were a few sizes too big on him, though they were soft and comfortable just the same.

Jon would have looked away when Martin changed into his own pajamas, would have given him that modicum of privacy, but Jonah watched--of _course_ Jonah watched--as Martin changed out of his day clothes and... and out of his binder in the process.

Had Martin been wearing his binder this whole time, then?

Even if he’d changed into it at his flat, which was a pretty big if, wearing it during that whole night-long car ride was still way longer than he should have been wearing it, way longer than was healthy to wear a binder in one sitting...

Jon supposed, though, that he was in no position to go lecturing Martin about sacrificing his own health on a whim. In more ways than one, even.

Jon wondered for a moment if Jonah Magnus had known that Martin was trans already, if he still held 1800s-esque opinions about such things, but then he remembered that of _course_ Jonah knew. Jonah knew practically everything about them, didn’t he? He’d proven that time and again, proven to be a threat just by knowing things that others would prefer remained unknown...

Somehow, it felt like both just a second ago and an eternity ago since Jon had realized the hard way that knowing inconvenient things wasn’t the _only_ way Jonah Magnus could uproot their lives at any given moment.


	8. Chapter 8

Jon had a dreamless sleep for the first time in... in a while, now. For longer than he’d like to admit, even to himself, he’d had the same dreams over and over, seen the same nightmares erupt in front of him as he could do nothing but watch them unfold.

Waking up wasn’t really much better, though. In the waking world as much as in those nightmares, it seemed that all Jon could do was watch and wait for the inevitable. At least in those dreams, he knew what he was waiting _for_.

Instead, he just sat up in the bed--the bed that he didn’t deserve to have alone (the bed that he should have given to Martin, if it really could only fit one of them)--and watched Martin sleep, listened to him snore as his legs dangled off the end of the couch. It took Jon a moment to realize that the warm hues streaming in from the nearby window were those of sunset, not sunrise, but maintaining a regular sleep schedule was the least of their problems right about now.

Jon heard his stomach gurgle loudly, and apparently so did Jonah, because he got up shortly thereafter, got out of bed and rooting through what was to be his (their?) and Martin’s new home. A few snacks remaining from their stop at the petrol station were scattered on the kitchen table, but instead of going for any of them Jon found himself rooting through the cabinets, seeing what Daisy had left there in the way of supplies.

Going through old canned goods and various other detritus wasn’t a quiet task, though Jon was sure it could be done more quietly than he was doing it right now, and it occurred to Jon that all the noise might wake Martin up a few minutes before he heard Martin’s plodding footsteps approaching him from behind.

“Looking for breakfast there?”

Jonah made a show of having Jon look towards the window, where the sun was hovering around the horizon, preparing to plunge below at any moment. “Breakfast or dinner?”

Martin took a moment before responding, and Jon looked over at him then. He looked a little groggy still, as if he’d been woken up mid-dream. (Why couldn’t he have just eaten one of the snacks and left the loud sorting of the cabinet goods for later? Did Jonah _want_ Martin to be rudely awakened by their movement?)

“Brinner.”

Jon laughed, and so did his body, though he could swear the two laughs didn’t sound quite the same. “Suppose that works.”

“What’d you find so far? Anything good?” Martin inched closer, until he was close enough Jon expected to feel the body heat radiating off him, but instead there was just... the cool air of the safehouse, if anything slightly more frigid than before Martin had approached.

Martin wasn’t radiating heat at all. Martin was... was _cold_.

Jon put together the pieces and didn’t much like the picture they portrayed.

“Those peaches have your name all over them.”

Jon looked up at Martin, who was making a face while looking at a small pile of canned peaches that had been among the foodstuffs left behind in the safehouse. “Are you sure?”

“ _Positive_. I haven’t eaten a can of peaches in two years, and I’m not going to start now.”

It took Jon a moment to remember when Martin had last eaten a can of peaches, and why he’d sworn off them ever since, and the reminder hit him with all the subtlety of a truck. Martin, trapped in his flat for nearly a fortnight, terrorized by a living flesh hive, and Jon was just- just _working,_ going about his life thinking things were fine, thinking _Martin_ was fine, thanks to a few stray texts sent from the phone Martin had dropped along the way...

And now it was Jon’s turn to be trapped, stuck with a supernatural entity that’d killed before as his only companion, and the outside world not realizing, thinking he was just fine, because he couldn’t communicate otherwise...

God, thirteen _days_ of that. No wonder Martin knew loneliness so well.

Jon didn’t notice himself picking up one of the cans of peaches, only leaving behind his current train of thought when he heard himself say, “Probably for the best, actually. It looks like these expired two months ago.”

“Only two months ago? They’re probably still fine.”

“I’ll just toss them, I’d rather not risk it.”

“Can’t you just...” Martin wiggled the fingers on his hands in a gesture that was both patently absurd and oddly endearing. “... _Know_ if they’re fine to eat?”

Jon wished it worked like that for him, but of course nothing was ever that easy for him, was it? His brain volunteered the story of the factory worker who’d helped sort that particular can of peaches, but rather than giving, say, a date on which said sorting had happened, he instead got to know that the worker in question had scratched his hand on the unexpectedly jagged edge of a can six days later, that said scratch had gotten infected and had led to the factory worker losing his thumb, his job, and nearly his marriage. All of which was entirely useless to know and a bit unpleasant to think about. Thanks for nothing, Beholding.

Jonah, though, he seemed to have more control over his abilities. Maybe he _could_ just look at a can of peaches and Know whether it was still safe to eat or not.

Jon wasn’t sure if that’s what Jonah did or whether he was just taking a guess, but soon enough he responded to Martin just the same. “You’re right, they’re safe still.”

“Called it.” Martin’s face was set in a tight grin. “So you’ve got brinner set, then. As for myself...”

Martin scooted even closer, and one of his arms brushed against Jon’s side, and it was like brushing against an icicle. Martin kept talking, rambling on about which of the canned foodstuffs he found most appetizing, but Jon couldn’t get past how freezing Martin’s arm had felt.

Jon might have dragged Martin out of the Lonely, but it seemed he hadn’t quite dragged the Lonely out of Martin.


	9. Chapter 9

Breakfast... dinner... _brinner_ was quiet and uneventful, after that. It would be easy to assume that it was meant to be a comfortable silence, that they had said all the things that really mattered back in the Lonely, but was that really true, or was there more to it than that? Jon thought it was the latter. Or perhaps Jon simply _hoped_ it was the latter, hoped that this silence might be a sign that Martin knew more than he was sharing and didn’t much care to make small talk with Jonah Magnus regardless of whose body he was wearing. It was hard to tell for sure.

After they both were done, though, the silence got heavier. There was no clear activity for them to do next, after all. There was only them, them and an unkempt but cozy safehouse and time that needed to be spent within it or around it until they needed food or sleep once more.

Jon had dreamed of a life filled with nothing but leisure time like that, once.

Jon had dreamed of an awful lot of things that seemed to be coming true now in the worst way possible, like his subconscious had gotten hold of a monkey’s paw and milked it for all it was worth.

Martin was the one to finally break the silence between them. “Are you good now?”

Jon felt his face wrinkle and contort in a semblance of confusion. “That’s an awfully broad question. What do you mean?”

Martin hesitated, blinking a few times before responding. “I just meant, er...” His voice trailed off a bit as he looked pointedly at one of the stray piles of newly-brought belongings strewn across the place, though what made that particular pile special Jon couldn’t tell at a glance. “You’re not still hungry?”

“Martin, we just ate.”

“Not- not _that_ kind of hungry.” Another semi-furtive glance directed towards the same pile of unorganized necessities. “Just, you know, I brought them along for you and all, but I don’t know how often you, well, _need_ one-”

Jon put together the pieces a moment before Martin made his meaning even more plain, though Jonah just raised his eyebrow in response.

“The, the statements. Do you need to go read a statement, Jon?”

Even though he knew he had no control over the actual response to Martin’s question, Jon thought about what his response would be just the same. He’d started to practically take the statement reading for granted, these past few months, which probably wasn’t a _great_ sign in hindsight; honestly, he’d grown better at tending to that need than making sure he ate actual food, if only because he’d learned the hard way what happened when that sort of hunger went unchecked. Now that he thought about it, though, he felt fine, at least physically. No hunger, no weakness, none of the symptoms he’d once mistaken for an illness before he’d known better.

Had it just not been long enough since the last statement for it to set in, or was his current situation enough to override that need, at least for the time being?

Jon’s train of thought was unexpectedly derailed by the sound of his own voice speaking up.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

“Alright, well, they’re all ready for you. Got a bunch over there-” Martin waved a hand in the direction of the pile he’d been staring at before. “-though I didn’t look too close at what I was grabbing, they might be ones you’ve read already, or, or even fake ones, I don’t know-”

“I’m sure it will be just fine. Thank you, Martin.” Jon felt his lips curl into a smile he didn’t really feel.

“Don’t mention it. Just, er, while you’re busy with that...” Martin scratched the back of his neck nervously. “Mind if I take a nap?”

A brief moment of hesitation, in which Martin’s face grew more and more pink by the second.

“Not that I don’t like hearing you monologue, but I figure hey, if the bed’s not being used...”

“Oh, of course. Go right ahead.”

“Thanks.”

Martin went off to curl up in the bed, and Jon hoped that he slept well, that maybe they could keep making arrangements like this so Martin could at least spend _some_ time sleeping somewhere more comfortable and height-appropriate than the sofa.

Jon couldn’t tell if Jonah was looking for something specific in the statements, but he did glance at a couple before deciding on one and pulling it out from the stack, giving Jon a bit of a paper cut in the process, though he knew from experience the sting wouldn’t last and the cut would likely be gone in minutes if not seconds. A small blessing, there, one minor upside of an otherwise horrible situation. Lose your humanity, heal faster from paper cuts. Not Jon’s idea of an ideal trade-off.

“Statement of Isaac Kaufmann, regarding the aftermath of an attempted mugging. Original statement given August 13th, 2009. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins...”

It was a bizarre feeling for Jon, reading out loud a statement without being drawn into it, going through the motions without any of the emotions he usually associated with the act. He felt bad for the guy, sure, but that was just basic human sympathy (or basic _inhuman_ sympathy perhaps), not literally feeling everything this Mr. Kaufmann felt upon almost being mugged and surviving only by way of encountering something stranger and no less dangerous than the man who had tried to mug him initially. Jon had wondered from time to time how odd his reading statements must look from an outside perspective; now, it seemed, he was as close to getting an answer to that question as he was likely ever to get.

The words pouring out of his mouth sounded like a passable imitation of his usual statement voice, at least, and if Jonah faltered once or twice, well, Martin wasn’t exactly hanging on his every word, napping as he was in the cabin’s lone bed...

Though that gave Jon an idea.

Jon couldn’t do much now, but he could still Know things--he’d learned that already, had done it without even trying to back in the car.

When he’d tried too hard to Know what Peter Lukas was planning some time ago, he’d made himself sick, even blacked out for a moment afterwards before getting what had to be the supernatural equivalent of the world’s worst hangover.

What would happen, then, if he tried to Know what Jonah Magnus was planning now?

At best, he’d get some answers, know exactly what was in store for him, though Jon wasn’t holding his breath on getting the best possible outcome here; life never seemed to be that generous towards him.

Maybe it’d do to his body what it’d done before, disorientate him, weaken him, and weakening _him_ meant weakening Jonah Magnus now, so that was a price Jon was very much willing to pay.

At worst... well. Not much could be worse than the present scenario. Worst case would likely be his attempt at Knowing failing utterly, and Jon still would know nothing and Jonah Magnus would still be running around unhindered in his body, and it still wouldn’t actually be any worse than if he hadn’t tried at all.

Jon didn’t hesitate.

_What is Jonah Magnus’ plan?_

The information poured into Jon’s mind all at once.

**_Ignaz Semmelweis, the first doctor to successfully prevent most postpartum infections by encouraging doctors to wash their hands, was roundly ignored by his contemporaries and died in obscurity. The tallest body Jonah Magnus has ever inhabited, one by the name of Mark Matthews, stood at six feet, three inches tall. The Admiral has a half-sister that lives nine blocks away from Georgie’s flat. Hydrophobia is a historic name for the disease of rabies due to late-stage symptoms in which the infected person cannot swallow liquids, cannot quench their thirst, and shows fear or panic when presented with liquids to drink. Liz Culvert, who dated Elias Bouchard when both were attending uni, wrote a short poem about Elias’ eyes while they were dating. The rhyme “Red touch yellow, kills a fellow; red touch black, friend of Jack” does successfully distinguish between venomous coral snakes and nonvenomous scarlet king snakes, but is only entirely accurate when applied to snake species native to the southeastern United States..._ **

The information keeps coming rapid-fire, the details of each seemingly-random factoid soon blurring together in Jon’s mind, his senses overpowered by the sheer weight of Knowledge within his head. The world faded away, replaced by static and words, and still the information kept coming and there was nothing he could do about it-

The next thing Jon knew (lower-case), he was sprawled out on the floor, head pounding, back smarting, every part of him hurting like hell--still unable to move a muscle of his own accord, though he did give it a try just in case--and the only good thing Jon could think of was that Jonah Magnus must be feeling this pain as acutely as he was.

If he had actually learned anything about Jonah Magnus’ current plans it was lost to him now, a drop within a sea of more or less useless information, a needle buried deep within a haystack.

Did Jonah Magnus feel as disoriented as Jon did? The only way to know for sure was to engage him in conversation, Jon supposed, but... he’d rather pass on that, thanks, especially since that’d probably manage to make his headache even worse somehow.

His hands were shaking as he sat up, though, and as Jon wasn’t the one controlling them, wasn’t the one in charge of their shaking or lack thereof, he figured that meant his little stunt must have had _some_ effect on his mental captor.

“Jon?”

Jon looked over as Martin rushed over to his side. Jon had assumed that Martin wouldn’t have noticed any results of what he’d done, that he’d be too lost in sleep to wake up for something so relatively minor, but evidently that assumption had been a faulty one.

“Jon, what happened? Are you alright?”

Jon tried not to read too much into the questions Martin asked, tried not to search them for even the slightest signs of understanding, but to no avail. He’d thought that he’d given up on false, useless hope already, and yet...

“I’m fine, don’t worry. Just a... a bit of a dizzy spell, I suppose.”

“Do you know what brought it on? You didn’t hit your head on the way down, did you?”

“I don’t believe so, no. And... hard to say. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

As Martin looked down at Jon, a hint of a smile crept onto his face. “No, no, I couldn’t sleep anyway. Wasn’t your doing. Now, d’you need a hand up?”

“Er...”

“Sounds like a yes to me.”

Martin extended his hand, and Jonah took it for him, and Martin was still cold to the touch but his manner was still warm as anything, and it didn’t matter what temperature his hand was, just that it was big and soft and embracing Jon’s own hand in turn, supporting him both physically and metaphorically a-

**Don’t try to pull that little stunt again.**

And Jon’s train of thought was disrupted in the most awkward of fashions by Jonah Magnus’ butting in just before Martin released his grip as Jon stood upright once more.

His arms were still shaking, though, and Jon doubted that Jonah was putting that on for show, not when his head still ached from too much knowledge filling it all at once.

So he could do something, then. He could do at least one thing that would affect the world around him, not just the worlds within his own mind. Granted, that thing was basically eldritch self-sabotage, but it was _something_ at least. That had to be a good sign. That had to be better than nothing.

And if Jonah Magnus was warning him against it, that meant that Jon now had some form of leverage against him, something he could threaten Jonah with that was clearer and more tangible than any of Jonah’s own vague yet ominous threats.

Jonah said something to Martin, but Jon didn’t hear it, busy as he was laughing to himself, hoping that his laughter would be loud enough for Jonah Magnus to hear.


	10. Chapter 10

Time dragged on. There were a few mundane tasks to be done around the safehouse--repairs to be done, supplies to be sorted through, essentials to be unpacked--but for the most part, the time was spent just... waiting, though what exactly they were waiting for Jon couldn’t say.

Martin seemed convinced that Jon hadn’t gotten a head injury by collapsing to the floor, which he supposed was better than the alternative, and his headache and weakness went away as minutes turned to hours turned to days, though the flood of mostly-useless information he had acquired remained his to access.

Part of Jon wanted to dive into it, desperate to find something, anything, that could give him answers, give him an upper hand, let him know what to expect from the days and weeks to come.

Part of Jon suspected that if he dived in, he might never surface again.

Jon resisted the urge for the time being, though he kept the option under consideration in case things managed to get even more dire; perhaps _that_ was what they were waiting for.

They slept, they ate, they tinkered, they made awkward attempts at small talk. Jonah didn’t have Jon pretend to read a statement again, but if Martin thought that was unusual, he didn’t say anything about it. Once their sleep schedules were at least slightly closer to that of most people, Martin went into town to use the payphone there and check how things were going at the Institute, as the safehouse itself didn’t have a signal.

The hours went slowly enough when Martin was there and Jon couldn’t reach out to him, literally or metaphorically, but somehow, time seemed to go even slower when Martin wasn’t there with him, when he was alone with the man keeping him prisoner in his own body.

Jon didn’t talk (well, “talk”) to Jonah in the meantime, instead silently waiting for Martin to return, and Jonah at least did him the courtesy of returning the favor and not disrupting Jon’s looping thoughts, thoughts that kept running through the same few points over and over with no end in sight...

Then eventually, finally, Martin returned, the door knocking gently against the wall after Martin pushed it open.

“Jon?”

Jon’s heart was racing as he made his way to the front room, both metaphorically and literally this time; evidently Jonah was as eager to hear what Martin had to say as Jon was, though presumably for a very different reason.

“You’re back?”

“No, I’m actually a very elaborate hologram.” Martin paused for a beat before saying, “Yes, Jon, I’m back. Observant as ever, I see.”

“I do try.”

“I’m sure you do.” Martin hung up his jacket on a nearby coat hook before settling down on the nearby couch. “Talked to Basira while I was out.”

Jon eased into the open space on the couch next to Martin. They weren’t quite touching, their bodies separated by about an inch of beat-up fabric; given his current situation, Jon wasn’t sure exactly how to feel about that fact, but it remained at the forefront of his mind just the same. “What did she have to say?”

“A few things, but the most important one is...” Martin turned towards Jon, his gaze fixed solely on Jon’s eyes--or on _Jonah’s_ eyes, really. “She says police think you’re the one who shot Elias.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Guess you really are on the run for murder again now, huh.”

It wasn’t quite a question, despite the phrasing, and Jonah seemed to recognize this, as while Martin took a moment to take a deep breath and stare at the floor before turning his gaze back upwards, Jon didn’t say a word in that time.

“Did you kill him?”

Jon found himself blinking several times rapidly, which was rather annoying because he’d much rather have his vision unimpeded and get to stare at Martin without any disruptions. “Elias? No, of course not, don’t be ridiculous!”

“You can tell me the truth, you know, Jon.”

“I _am_.”

“I wouldn’t judge you for it, either. Hell, I came pretty close to doing it myself.”

It was hard to focus on the implications there when he could instead focus on Martin’s soft, shaky laugh, but Jon tried just the same. Was that what he’d missed on his way to the Panopticon, something Martin had been considering before being flung into the Lonely? Or was there some other instance in which Martin had come close to murdering their mutual boss?

“Really? Well, that... that doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t kill Elias.”

“If you say so.” Martin sounded less than convinced. “What about Peter Lukas, then?”

“What _about_ him?” Jon kept waffling on how good he thought Jonah’s impersonation of him was, but he had to admit, Jon would sound every bit as exasperated as his voice did now if it were truly him having to field questions about that man. Perhaps Jonah Magnus loathed Peter Lukas every bit as much as Jon himself did, though Jon doubted that their reasoning would be the same.

“Three of us went into the Lonely. Only two of us made it out. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there’s a story there.”

“...if you’re trying to imply something, I’d much rather you just spit it out already.”

“Fine then. Jon, what did you do to Peter?”

There was a long pause before Jon spoke, a pause in which Jon considered what he’d actually done, what Martin would think of it, and whether Jonah would tell the truth or lie about what had happened in the Lonely. What Jon had done to Peter... it wasn’t a moment Jon was proud of, that was for sure, even though it was probably the best possible outcome for the situation given that Peter Lukas seemed to have no intention of letting Martin escape the Lonely otherwise.

Peter Lukas was a murderer, that much was clear. He’d killed sailors on the Tundra, even killed Institute staff, and there was no reason to believe he’d stop without being _forced_ to stop. But now Jon himself was a murderer. Was that really any better, killing one murderer just to take his place?

And come to think of it, Peter’s last words about his deal with Elias, how “he got you”... he’d been referring to exactly what had happened to him afterwards, hadn’t he? But how was Jon’s possession connected to Lukas’ deal with Jonah Magnus? Why was _now_ the time Jonah chose for him to become possessed?

“...exactly what he deserved.”

The words were spat out without warning, suddenly derailing Jon’s train of thought. He hadn’t expected them, hadn’t expected the venom apparent in his own voice, hadn’t expected Jonah Magnus to sound like he hated the man every bit as much as Jon did for what he’d done to Martin and the Institute.

Martin looked like he hadn’t been expecting such a response either, his eyes going wide and his face pale, standing up from his place on the couch in the blink of an eye. “I... I’m going for a walk.”

“Martin, you just got back from the village.”

“Yes, and I’m going out again. Alone.” Martin paced over to the door once again, grabbing his coat off the coat hook with what looked like rather more force than was necessary.

“Look, if this is about what I said, we can talk about it-”

“Yeah, we’ll talk about it. Later. When I get back.”

“Martin, I-”

Martin opened the door, a brief bit of cool autumn air flowing into the room before he slammed it behind him.

Jon felt like slumping down, like sinking into the couch until he and it were one, but instead, as the sound of Martin slamming the door faded away, he stood up instead, a strange smile forcing its way onto his face.


	11. Chapter 11

Distant alarm bells rang in Jon’s head as the strange, inexplicable smile upon his face only grew wider.

“Did you know, Jon-”

And his voice was different, now, still recognizably _his_ voice but not quite the same, Jonah not adopting Jon’s own speech patterns to play pretend anymore, and yet Jon could hear his voice echoing through his own head even as the tone was clearly that of a man he _hated_ -

“-that today happens to be the two-hundredth anniversary of the Magnus Institute being founded?”

Jon had not known that.

For one thing, Jon couldn’t recall ever coming across the exact date of the Institute’s founding, just that it had happened back in 1818 (and he _had_ recognized that that made it two hundred years ago, had known enough to be suspicious of that fact, and now he felt strangely vindicated by that).

For another thing, Jon didn’t actually know what day it was now. It had been the 25th, he was pretty sure, when everything went to hell back at the Institute, but beyond that... well, the days were starting to blend together. (Was it October already? It wasn’t, was it?)

“I could draw things out further, I suppose, but it feels right to have the same date on which I founded the Institute so long ago be the one on which my plans for the Institute and the power it serves should reach their culmination. Two centuries of work, and it all comes down to this.”

There was so much Jon wanted to ask, wanted to know, wanted to _Know_ , but he knew that asking Jonah Magnus for further details would be fruitless at best and actively misleading at worst. What mattered was that whatever his plan was, apparently it was being put into action today, and there was very likely nothing that Jon in his current state could do to prevent it.

“I’ll explain the details later; I don’t know how long we have now, but afterwards there will be plenty of time for explanation. There will be nothing _but_ time.”

The grin on Jon’s face widened, even though Jon could swear he felt his heart sinking to the floor.

“You- no, _we_ are prepared, we are ready, we are _marked_. The power of the Ceaseless Watcher flows through us, and the time of our victory is here.”

The Eye’s ritual, then? It had to be. The Watcher’s Crown, somebody had called it before, though Jon couldn’t remember who now, couldn’t even remember if he’d come across the name in a statement or in files or in an actual conversation.

None of the other rituals had worked, though, not even the one attempted by the People’s Church, the one that Gertrude had known about yet did nothing to prevent. Perhaps this would be the same, just another failed ritual, a footnote in the annals of history.

Jon suspected, however, that he wouldn’t be that lucky.

“ _You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right_.”

Jon’s voice sounded different again, the phrasing and articulation of his speech seeming neither quite like himself speaking aloud, nor truly like that of Jonah Magnus himself. The words flowed out rhythmically, regularly, less like regular speech and more like... a chant? An incantation of some sort?

The words had to have been planned in advance, they flowed too well to be made up on the spot, but Jonah never stumbled, never hesitated in his speech. If it was memorized, it was memorized perfectly.

Jon thought he heard some kind of background noise start up--soft and high pitched, like his ears were ringing--but he might have been imagining it. (He certainly _hoped_ that he was merely imagining it.)

“ _Come to us in your wholeness. Come to us in your perfection._ ”

Not words Jon himself would use to describe the Eye, not from what he knew of it (and he knew too much, Knew too much), but perhaps from Jonah Magnus’ twisted point of view it would seem more accurate...

“ _Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and **dies**!_”

The upside to not being in control here, not being the one actually speaking the words (even as they echoed through his head, came out of his mouth in his voice), was that Jon was free to sit back and analyze what it was he was actually saying.

His thoughts that this was simply the Watcher’s Crown, the Eye ritual incarnate, seemed well and truly disproven by midway through that particular sentence. All the fears, then? The connections between some of the wording and some of the fears seemed clear enough, though he wasn’t able to do a 1-to-1 match-up on the fly. Or a combination of the two, a ritual guided by the Eye but including all the other fears as well?

Jon’s suspicions that this ritual had been planned a bit more carefully than all the rest, that it might well work where the others had universally failed, grew.

“ _Come to us._ ”

It was, perhaps, a minor miracle that Jon wasn’t out of breath yet. He’d done chants and speeches and the like before, in his band in uni if nothing else, but he wouldn’t have guessed that his lung capacity was still up to the task all these years later. Apparently, he could still do an invocation...

“ _I... OPEN... THE DOOR!_ ”

Jon’s mind went back instinctively to his first ever experience with the supernatural, to another door which was opened whether he wanted it or not. Here, too, that choice was denied to him. He hadn’t bothered struggling during this long speech, though perhaps if things were different he might have; Jon had already given up on that end of things, had begun to accept that he wasn’t regaining control of his own body that easily.

There was some sort of static, a strange hiss, and then... nothing.

Jon wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t the eerie silence that followed, the only sign that anything had changed being a slight pins-and-needles sensation in his hands.

He ran over to the window, which showed the idyllic scenery of the Scottish Highlands, undisturbed by whatever Jonah Magnus had just tried to pull inside. It was, Jon noted distantly, a beautiful day out.

_Was that supposed to do something?_

Jon’s body started pacing back and forth, but Jonah didn’t say anything, either out loud or in his head.

_This wasn’t how this was supposed to go, was it?_

Still no response, but as he walked aimlessly around the room, that wide grin on his face quickly fading, Jon grew more and more certain that whatever Jonah had planned to accomplish with that grand speech, it hadn’t happened and wasn’t _going_ to happen. Something had gone wrong. Just like all the rituals before it, something had gone wrong somewhere along the line.

Though Jonah kept pacing, the speed slowly increasing as he ran his hands through his hair and massaged his temple, his evident aggravation was matched in turn by Jon’s amusement at how his plot had evidently gone very much wrong--or, perhaps, depending on one’s perspective, it had gone very much _right_.


	12. Chapter 12

Jon’s mind was still reeling, still trying to process what Jonah Magnus had just done (or, more accurately, had just _tried_ to do), when he heard the front door creak open.

“Back already?” Jonah was back to making his voice sound more like Jon’s again, back to the façade that he had worn for days now.

Martin’s footsteps were heavy as he entered the cottage, gently easing the door closed behind him. “I decided I’d rather talk than walk, actually.”

“Couldn’t you have decided that before you went on a walk in the first place?”

“Look, I’m sorry we can’t _all_ be all-knowing, but-”

There was a brief moment there where Martin abruptly stopped talking and Jon didn’t realize why, didn’t realize what he’d said that was so amiss.

And then the penny in the air finally dropped.

“So you know?”

Martin looked right at him, right into Jon’s eyes ( _Jonah’s_ eyes), nodding tersely before letting out a sharp, bitter laugh. “Did you really not even once think to _check_?”

“I may have made certain... assumptions.” Jonah wasn’t trying to mimic Jon’s speech patterns anymore, his voice once again settling into that strange place where it was both recognizably Jon’s own voice and recognizably not how Jon would normally speak. “What gave it away?”

“What _didn’t_ give it away?” Martin laughed again, his laugh even louder this time, though still with that same sharp edge to it. “For someone who’s all-knowing, you sure don’t seem to know _Jon_ \--though even if you did, I’d have known from the start. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice when the eyes of the man I love became the eyes of a man I _hate_?”

Martin kept talking, Jon was pretty sure, something about the specific details that had given Jonah away beyond the change in Jon’s eyes, and Jonah spoke up a few times himself, but that one sentence kept echoing in Jon’s mind for a long time, its repetition seeming to drown out any of the voices around him.

_Did you really think I wouldn’t notice when the eyes of the man I love became the eyes of a man I hate?_

_...the eyes of the man I love..._

_...the man I love..._

Jon had heard Martin’s words in the Lonely, sure, heard Martin say that _I really loved you_ right before disappearing back into the fog, but that was different. For one thing, that was the confession of a man who was about to disappear from the world entirely, a man who was ready and willing to die; for another, it was in the past tense. _Loved._

Jon had assumed that Martin had been referring to some time before the Lonely got its grip on his heart, back when Jon had refused to acknowledge his own feelings for Martin, that their relationship would be defined by impeccably poor timing and had failed before it had even had a chance to begin.

But this statement wasn’t in the past tense, and it wasn’t the final statement of a Martin willing to give himself back to the Lonely either. Jon was, to Martin, _the man I love_.

Martin loved Jon. Jon loved Martin, and Martin loved him back. In this moment, at this time, Martin felt the same way about Jon that Jon felt for him.

Anything else that Martin said couldn’t be more important than those simple words, and certainly anything _Jonah_ had to say couldn’t be either.

Jon only wished he could speak up and reciprocate Martin’s love confession with one of his own instead of just looking on silently.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


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